Thank You Father!

Here is the prayer that the priests of Israel would pray over their people. We can claim this for ourselves because Jesus is our High Priest. So this is my prayer for you and me for a blessed 2024! 

"The Lord bless you and keep you. The Lord make His face to shine upon you and be gracious to you! The Lord lift up His countenance upon you and give you peace!" Numbers 6:24-26

A friend, Chito, sent a recap of his year and included this excerpt from Ronald Modras’ “Ignatian Humanism”  which reads:

“…we can have an experience of union and familiarity with God no matter the distractions of our work or the banality of our lives. Here is the basis for finding God not only in all things but in the flurry of everyday life. Nothing human is merely human. No common labor is merely common. Classrooms, hospitals, and artists’ studios are sacred spaces. No secular pursuit of science is merely secular. Like Ignatius after his experience at the Cardoner River, we see things differently. The world is charged with the grandeur of God.”

This resonated so much with me, I immediately took out my new 2024 Hobonichi planner (a wonderful gift I won from a friend, Tina) and wrote the passage on one of the first pages. 

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God” is a verse found in one of my favorite poems by Jesuit priest Gerald Manley Hopkins. He desired to glorify God with his pen, and he believed man was created to praise God. 

Indeed, if we find God in all things, even in the distresses and banalities of every day life, truly we will see the grandeur of God. 

Thank You Father for favoring all creation with a ceaseless, relentless flow of blessing and grace. For being with us in our ordinariness and ultimately uniting us with You in splendor. 

“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.

    It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;

    It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil”